I am going to be covered up through the weekend, but there have been some good discussions down the page that I want to bump up as stand alone posts. One is a discussion of the situation in Venezuela, and whether the IOCs were/are exploiting the people there. I will pull bits of that up at some point, but it will take more time to extract the relevant portions.
But, following my most recent essay, reader Benjamin Cole made some comments that are worth bumping up for discussion. I won’t have time until after the weekend to address them in detail, but maybe other readers would like a crack. And maybe some will agree with his assessement. Below are the relevant comments, which I have edited only slightly for some minor errors.
On the subject of low inventories, he wrote:
You have to back in ethanol. It is added into gasoline supplies, but not counted. I think ethanol is now about 3 percent of US gasoline supplies. If so, that brings us into five-year average range right now. Soon, within two years, ethanol will make up 6 percent of US gasoline supplies.
I would also be suspicious of seasonal adjustment factors. It looks to me like they are out of whack.
That being said, US consumers, evidently, will buy all the gas they can use at under $4 a gallon, although high mpg cars are selling well. At more than $4, I think we see serious mood shift.
On the other hand, you really cannot blame consumers for being “rational.” Until recently, a gallon of gasoline was cheaper than at any time since the 1960s. We simply will not tax gasoline like we should.
On the subject of where we are heading from here, he writes:
By the way, according to the Energy Blog, E3 has their new generation, cattle dung and corn stalk fired ethanol plant up and running. Also, a 100 mgpd ethanol plant going in Georgia, which will use heat to convert wood chips into ethanol. No enzymes.
If world fossil oil production really rises to 95 mbd by 2012, we are going to have a glut. Small additional demands for liquid fuel from here on can probably be met through conservation and biofuels.
At more than $60 a barrel, we are seamlessly transitioning to a post-fossil economy, with cleaner air and less wealth being transferred to those bastas in OPEC. How is this bad?
I have several issues with those comments, which I will get to on Monday. Until then, I toss him into the ring.
I want to also reiterate, which I did to my critic on the Venezuelan essay, that I am always open to posting guest posts – even if I strongly disagree with your opinion. I may open up a can of whoop-ass 🙂 (this is how someone at The Oil Drum characterized my style yesterday), but I am not going to muzzle anyone unless they are making personal attacks.
Robert – I’ll bump my own post just in case Steve is out there:
Expropriating Venezuela Refineries
I compared Norway to Iraq and Venezuela asking Steve how private development of Norway’s oil and gas has exploited the Norwegian people. I linked to an interesting article:
Norway Claims Most Millionaires
On a per capita basis Norway has just 1,500 barrels of oil reserves per capita, compared to 23,000 for Iraq. The Iraqi oil law sounds like the same type of development scheme that Norway used, a combination of state oil (INOC) and private development.
Interestingly, the two leading private companies in Norway’s development are the same ones who just withdrew from Venezuela heavy oil: ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. If oil companies are inherently evil how does one explain Norway? UK North Sea? Alberta Tar Sands? Trinidad & Tobago?
OPEC producers must know that at $70 per barrel they are destroying demand and sowing the seeds of their own demise.
I remember the previous Venezuela oil minister being very concerned about keeping oil in the $20-30 target range. Sheikh Zaki Yamani, the Saudi Oil minister, made similar predictions in 2000.
If oil prices were low, there would not be all the interest in new transportation technologies. As with any technology, prices will come down once they are widely adopted. The oil producers are just speeding up the transition process.
I’m not sure how seamless this transition is. If ethanol does make up 3% of our gasoline supply by volume, then that’s taking about 15% of the 2006 corn crop. And since ethanol contains less energy than gasoline, that 3% is more like 2%.
So 15% of our corn crop for 2% of our gasoline supplies, and that doesn’t even take into account the amount of energy it took to grow all that corn and convert it to ethanol. That doesn’t sound like a very good deal to me. I think that if we ever try to produce a significant amount of our fuel supplies using ethanol, say 20% or more, then we’ll start seeing some serious environmental and economic problems in this country. Given our insatiable demand and wasteful use of gasoline in this country, it is lunacy to think we can convert to ethanol.
Who hasn’t read Nassim Taleb?
He isn’t the only writer on human perceptions for risk and prediction, but he’s a good place to start (“Fooled by Randomness”).
I think only after you acknowledge that we are really bad at this can you then trade scenarios with self-awareness.
And in this case, self-awareness is definitely not the same thing as self-confidence.
With that long intro … could we have a seamless transition? Sure. For it to happen we’d probably need a relatively slow fall-off in oil production world-wide, and some pretty quick inventions.
This is especially true if you take “seamless” to mean fuel prices stay below $4/gal.
Of course there are a lot more scenarios out there. And with a little self-awareness, we wouldn’t allow ourselves to become wedded to just one.
I am red-faced at having my hastily written posts being turned into a topic of discussion!
But to corn: Does anyone realize that the US is now planting the same amount of acreage as we did shortly after WWII? Crop yileds have improved that much (curiously, perhaps spurred by higher CO2 levels).
Not that it matters, but I am not such a big fan of ethanol. But we have umpteen corn state Senators, so what are we going to do?
Diesel is a better choice, but we are what we are.
But kudos to Rapier for having an open forum. I may disagree with some here, but I prefer to read a wide range of opinions.
Can’t say I typically agree with Ben, but now that he has placed the proper distance between himself and corn, I’ll have to side with him on this.
Of course, “seamless” is a relative term. I would consider any scenario where gasoline stays below ~$10/gal seamless. Apparently Americans spent on average 3.16% of their income on gasoline in 2005. I suspect this number has to be north of 10% before people will really start responding to it – obviously, some would be first responders, and this will get interesting/challenging. But for the most part, gasoline prices have to go up quite a bit (based on recent experience) to actually move people to respond in a real way. I.e. other than calling Big Oil ugly names.
I base my optimism, in part, on the history of chemical engineering during the World Wars. The Nazis started to convert coal to diesel. During WWI the Germans started large scale production of synthetic rubber, due to war-related shortages of the natural product. The technology took another leap forward during the run-up to WWII. To me, this proves necessity is the mother of invention.
The main danger to a seamless transition, IMHO, are the pinheads isolated from the real world in Washinton DC. These fools serve up a more bone-headed solution every day: “Hydrogen! Ethanol! Price gouging laws! We feel your pain! Now remember: Don’t call us, we’ll be at lunch with our lobbyists…”
The federal government is already doing long lasting damage to the alternative fuel movement with its we’ve-seen-the-future-and-it-is-X policies. And then every two to four years, they have to scrap X(n) and replace it with X(n+1). And they never seem to learn that not even Einstein could predict what the right X is.
*Rant continues warning*
The problem, of course, runs deeper than that. In some ways capitalism is consuming the hand that feeds itself. Government policies are increasingly designed by big corporations that have a vested interest in keeping you and I in a state of spoilt brat-hood. “You need more! And besides, it’s good for the (to be precise my) economy.” No place for leaders in today’s politics…
*That feels better*
Benjamin Cole said: By the way, according to the Energy Blog, E3 has their new generation, cattle dung and corn stalk fired ethanol plant up and running.
Benjamin,
If you read more about E3’s closed-loop ethanol plant, you will find it only works because it is co-located with a 28,000 head confined animal feeding operation (CAFO), or what E3 more euphemistically likes to call a “feedlot.”.
CAFOs have their own issues
There are serious drawbacks to CAFOs.
1. The cattle in CAFOs are in close proximity and disease spreads rapidly. The cattle must be kept pumped full of high-powered antibiotics to keep them healthy.
2. Constant use of antibiotics leads to the bacteria evolving and developing a resistance to antibiotics.
3. That in turn leads to the need to constantly develop more expensive and higher-powered antibiotics.
4. And we must also ask if humans should be eating meat from cows that have been pumped full of antibiotics, and that were fed on corn grown from genetically modified seed.
Right now there are 114 ethanol plants in the U.S. Putting a 28,000 head CAFO next to each of them isn’t the solution.
Co-locating an ethanol plant with a CAFO will only be a solution where CAFOs already exist. Not many small Midwestern towns with existing ethanol plants will want a smelly 28,000 head CAFO located next to their plant on the edge of town.
The Ogallala Aquifer
It’s also worth knowing that E3’s Mead, Nebraska operation is on the edge of the Ogallala Aquifer. That same aquifer from which farmers and industry in Nebraska, Kansas, South Dakota, and parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Wyoming are drawing water faster than it can be recharged.
Those corn farmers and ethanol plants on the Ogallala are using unrenewable water that has been stored underground for tens of thousands of years — another example of how making corn ethanol consumes valuable, unrenewable resources.
It amazes me that many people still consider corn ethanol to be a “renewable” fuel.
Nigel
Some time ago I did this back of the envelope with some huge simplifying assumptions, which corresponds to brad’s comment (more or less) on ethanol:
20,000,000 bbl oil/day(US only) times 365 days/year = 7,300,000,000 bbl oil/year used in USA
There’s 42gal/bbl of oil, so USA consumes 306,600,000,000gal/year of oil.
Assuming all that oil is used as fuel (yes, not true, but close enough for this calculation, and using gasoline as having the typical energy content– I’m only looking to get the right order of magnitude)
1.50 gallons of ethanol has the same energy content as 1 gal “oil” (that’s the number for gasoline, but not too far off for diesel, jet fuel, etc).
So, 459,900,000,000 gal/year ethanol are needed.
Pessimists say it takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than it will yield — in other words, it can never be self-sufficient as a fuel source. But optimists argue (the most optimistic of the optimists) that there’s a 1.30 return– that is, 1 gallon ethanol would be burned to make 1.3 gallon of ethanol. That’s running tractors, transportation, and mfg./distilling plants (turning corn into ethanol).
So, to make the amount of ethanol we need, we’d need to burn another 353,769,230,769 gal/year of ethanol.
That means we need to farm enough to make a total of 813,669,230,769 gal/year of ethanol.
Right now, we get about 370 gallons/acre yield for corn. Sure, other stuff, e.g., switchgrass, is 2 -3 times better, but corn for now. We can divide by three later.
That means 2,199,106,029 total acres needed doing nothing but growing corn. There’s 640acres/sq mile, so 3,436,103 sq miles of corn needed.
Pennsylvania is 46,055 square miles. Iowa is 56,272. Indiana is only 36,418 sq miles, Kansas is 82,277, so lets just say 50k for those size of states.
So, thats about 69 Pennsylvania/Iowa/Kansas/Indiana sized states growing nothing but corn.
If we switch to magic switchgrass, divide by three, and we’re at the much more reasonable 23 Penn/Iowa-sized states completely covered by nothing but switchgrass. In addition to the farms that are there growing food now.
Since I’m making no allowance for mountains, rivers, marshes and all that other non-arable land, I think I’m being overly fair to the ethanol crowd.
Nigel-
Like I said, if we had the political power to come up with something else in the USA, I would not be a fan of ethanol. I am hopeful for algae-to-oil, or some other fuels. Maybe even genetically modified jatropha will someday work in the US, although our labor costs are high.
On the other hand, we eat antibiotic-shot meat everyday anyway. The E3 plant takes wet mash left over from the ethanol and feeds the cows. You may be a veggie, and that is fine, but most Americans and people worldwide crave meat. The E3 plant captures a lot of methane too. It is better than previous practices.
My real agenda is this: First, we have to reduce consumption of fossil fuel to survive. OPEC has a noose around our necks, and they are letting it tighten. They are no friends of ours.
Secondly, the shift to biofuels is great, as it reduces pollution, and keeps money home, and decreases our reliance on unreliable despotic and terrorism-funding foreign suppliers. Bastas.
Along the way, some inferior biofuel methods will be used, as corn ethanol. But, we will get better and better at it.
Also, the real hero will be the PHEV. We can sip biofuels and drive PHEVs, and import no oil, save possibly from Canada.
The good news is that at this price point, look for world fossil oil consumption to go down, not up. We can transition to a better world.
Wen I said seamless, perhaps I was being a bit glib. For wealthy nations, the transition will be relatively easy. For others, OPEC is causing true pain. They are transferring hundreds of billions of of developing nations into OPEC hands, a knd of reverse welfare program.
My thought after reading more of this thread is that the transition might look seamless in retrospect … in the far future, when the choices have been made.
But right now … we have to wait for uncertain events, discoveries, inventions, and failures, to shape public opinion.
Anybody ready to name the winning tech of the 2030’s needs to read their Taleb for a second time 😉
Benjamin said: On the other hand, we eat antibiotic-shot meat everyday anyway.
But should we? If we let cattle graze on open range and eat grass like nature intended, we wouldn’t need to pump them full of antibiotics. Same with poultry. All the antibiotics are needed because we confine them in close quarters making it easy for disease to spread rapidly.
The E3 plant takes wet mash left over from the ethanol and feeds the cows. You may be a veggie, and that is fine, but most Americans and people worldwide crave meat.
Definitely not a veggie — I’m a big fan of real pork barbecue — the kind that cooks for hours over low heat.
My point was that building CAFOs next to the 114 existing ethanol plants in the U.S. isn’t the solution for powering ethanol plants without burning fossil fuels.
There is a small town of 10,000 not far from me that has an ethanol plant. Those people would never agree to put a CAFO next to that plant just so it would have a handy place to get rid of the distillers grains and could collect the methane to burn. The impact of the ethanol plant on the edge of town is bad enough, let alone what it would be from a 28,000 head CAFO.
My real agenda is this: First, we have to reduce consumption of fossil fuel to survive.
Concur. Unfortunately, the way to do that is to change our lifestyle, and most people won’t do that voluntarily.
We aren’t addicted to oil as GWB said, but are instead addicted to the luxury that consuming vast amounts of energy gives us. That addiction will truly be difficult to break.
Nigel
Benjamin Cole wrote:
Also, the real hero will be the PHEV. We can sip biofuels and drive PHEVs, and import no oil, save possibly from Canada.
Not be harsh, but are you serious? Please, add some thought to this.
First, read what I wrote above about ethanol. Until we get several orders of magnitude improvement, they just don’t matter. Not double, not triple, but 100 or 1,000 times better than today.
Second, for the Plug-in part of your PHEV:
Chemical reaction (fire) makes heat, heat rotational motion, rotational motion makes electricity, send electricity through wires (what’s the typical I2R to get electrons to your house?), convert electricity back to DC, then back to chemical energy. Then take chemical energy in battery, convert to electricity, and back to motion.
Yikes! Can we add any more energy conversions (each one with <1.0 efficiency)? There’s something to be said for chopping off all but the first two in that series. Regular car = chemical energy to heat, heat to rotational motion. Done.
And there’s nothing good about plug-in. Unless you are a hazmat, I mean, battery mfr…..
And what is this fascination with hybrids?
Maybe the regeneration is worth it, especially in the city. And I like that it uses an Atkinson engine instead of Otto…but that’s not a reason to give hybrids an HOV pass, though, where all cars are just punchin’ a hole in the wind. A Prius on the highway gets the same gas mileage whether it is a hybrid or not. There’s nothing magic about the cool logo on the tail.
Please compare Prius mileage to a 1989 Honda Civic CRX HF or a 1993 Geo Metro XFi.
Are the benefits of hybrid really worth the battery and complexity? That’s all added resources + energy to mfr. and maintain. Other than the snazzy label that advertises just how concerned and environmentally aware you are, is it worth it?
If you use dollars as a proxy to measure resource consumption, you gotta drive a Prius a really, really long time before it breaks even….and maybe close to forever to beat the old-tech high-efficiency cars. Yes, I am aware that my examples have rather low-HP motors. But they can get you from point A to B safely.
But let’s be fair — what would the difference in actual (not EPA) daily driver gas mileage difference be between a Prius and compared to a Prius w/o the hybrid/synergy? Same Atkinson-cycle engine, several hundred lbs. less weight….
Now, if you handed out tax breaks and HOV passes to everything w/ a > 50mpg highway mileage rating, I’d be cool with that. Let the engineers figure out how to maximize drivability (aka horsepower) while still getting this mileage, instead of mandating an engineering solution by bureaucratic fiat (properly funded by special interests, of course).
As long as I’m hallucinating, though I might as well wish for a $3/gallon tax on gasoline (and equivalent per BTU tax on all “burning” sources of energy, including ethanol, coal, etc.), as long as it was revenue neutral (i.e., offset by reductions in individual and corporate income taxes). And repeal CAFE. Hey, I said I was hallucinating, it might as well be a good trip.
Please compare Prius mileage to a 1989 Honda Civic CRX HF or a 1993 Geo Metro XFi.
Are the benefits of hybrid really worth the battery and complexity? That’s all added resources + energy to mfr. and maintain. Other than the snazzy label that advertises just how concerned and environmentally aware you are, is it worth it?
Hugely different cars. The Prius is a Midsize by EPA classification.
What we see in the market today (as cars meet equal safety and emissions requirements) is that things like the Mini can get to 40 mpg without the hybrid option. With the hybrid option you can push closer to 50 mpg in a significantly larger car.
But, to beat my dead horse, we can name the winners today. The bicycle is king for efficiency, but with low range and luggage capacity.
We can move up to small cars with good mpg.
We can move up to midsize cars with the hybrid option.
We can do those things today, if we want to reduce our oil consumption and/or CO2 emissions.
But we branch into the unpredictable (still haven’t read Taleb?) when we start talking about how soon the majority will choose today’s efficient options. It is even more unpredictable when we start talking about how soon the majority will choose those options yet to be invented (and produced at a reasonable price point).
So why to comment critters spend so much time pondering the unpredictable?
Is that what energy blogs are for?
Dear All:
Okay, like I said, I am not a big fan of ethanol, but it is what we have to play with in the USA, for political reasons.
The E3 plant and one like it will get several times energy returns, not 1.3 to one. We are planting the same acreage in corn today as shortly after WWII. Yields are rising. It seems we can move to 6 percent ethanolmix in gasoline in three years with no problem.
There is a wood chip to ethanol plant being built in Georgia. A lot of talk now about converting biomass to ethanol, not crops, due to recent advances. At $60 a barrel and above I suspect we can move to 15-20% ethanol in our gasoline w/o major disruptions.
On PHEVs, I am not an expert. My limited understanding is that due to efficiencies at power plants, we actually do okay powering up batteries. Remebr, braking recharges batteries. We also get rid of smog.
For a guy doing the daily commute, a PHEV could get 100 mpg. Run on batteries for all of a 20 mile or less commute, both ways. I see a day when dense urabn cores outlaw automobles in the center, and anything except PHEVs elsewhere. Like smoking – the “right” to smoke eventaully was wiped out, if someone was breathing around you. Same with internal combustion engines.
Power plants can be solar, wind, hydro. We can also mandate solar collectors on every large rooftop etc. Big advances have been made on solar of late. Wind farms are booming. Every power source has shortcomings and yes, yes, yes I believe deeply in conservation. We have to have the price signals there.
But, happily, due to conservation and fuel switching, I think we can move into a post-fossil economy, and consume less fossil fuel every year w/o a depression. We are close already, after just three years of higher prices. World fossil demand rose 0.7 percent last year. We are almost at Peak Demand right now.
I regret being so glib as to say “seamlessly”. If you make 100k a year in USA, if may seem seamless. So, you next car is a Mercedes PHEV at 80k, financed monthly, instead of a 70k Fatmobile.
If you live in rural Thailand, and suddenly the baht bus costs double to ride, that will be real hardship.
It is the OPEC bastas, and the clowns in Libya, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Venezuela, Russia who are doing this.
The good news is that that the developed world can lead us through this mess, if we just try.
Benjamin:
You apparently have no clear concept of just how fuel intensive and destructive industrial corn and beef production are. Tying our fuel source to this industry is simply moving from one unsustainable solution to another, equally unsustainable solution. Ethanol produced from industrial agriculture does not reduce pollution or resource depletion, it simply shifts pollution from one form to another (eutrification of waterways and the Gulf of Mexico, depletion of aquifers).
E3’s way is better than the usual way of producing ethanol, and the energy returns are better, but that’s not saying much. Their process would be helpful if we were, in fact, fuel constrained in the short term. We’re not. We are facing higher fuel prices than we are used to, but relative to any sensible use of the resource, we have plenty in the short term.
Our problem is not an immediate shortage of energy, or even liquid fuel. It’s the fact that we’ve tied ourselves to a fundamentally unsustainable energy source, and the cracks in that system are starting to show. Shifting to a different, equally unsustainable source doesn’t really help.
Nigel,
Your comments on CAFO’s / feedlots are well meaning but substantially incorrect. Your points are in italics.
1. The cattle in CAFOs are in close proximity and disease spreads rapidly.
Cattle are herd animals, they like to hang out with each other and socialize. Outside a feedlot cattle can wander away from each other but they are still in close proximity for much of the day.
The cattle must be kept pumped full of high-powered antibiotics to keep them healthy.
Could not be more incorrect.
After reading your post I priced some of the latest generation of antibiotics that are used to treat respiratory infections in cattle (the most common feedlot sickness)
They ranged in price from $140 per 100 ml (micotil) $365 (draxxin) per 100 ml. For those used to non metric units 100 ml is a little under 7 tablespoons of liquid.
It would be economic suicide to try and keep cattle healthy by giving them high powered antibiotics.
Instead of brute force feedlots use a “cattle wellness” program to keep the cattle healthy. This includes a good vaccination program, good sanitation in the feedlot, good animal care, and plenty of clean food and water.
2. Constant use of antibiotics leads to the bacteria evolving and developing a resistance to antibiotics.
The way antibiotics are used in feedlots has not led to the development of antibiotic resistance. There may be one or two examples in the literature but it is a rare occurrence.
3. That in turn leads to the need to constantly develop more expensive and higher-powered antibiotics.
One of the big drivers of antibiotic development is the fact that new antibiotics under patent provides the pharmaceutical company with a new profit center. Other drivers include ease of treatment and ability to effectively reach infected tissues.
4. And we must also ask if humans should be eating meat from cows that have been pumped full of antibiotics, and that were fed on corn grown from genetically modified seed.
First the cattle have not been heavily treated with antibiotics.
Second, beef is a very nutritious food stuff that fits well into a balanced, healthy diet.
Try an experiment and watch the food people purchase in supermarkets.
A short time observing what people actually purchase and eat will convince most everyone that substituting beef for much of what people purchase in a supermarket would markedly improve many peoples diets
Cheers,
TJIT
GreenEngineer said…
You apparently have no clear concept of just how fuel intensive and destructive industrial corn and beef production are.
As an engineer I’m sure you realize the importance of root causes.
That is why it is crucially important to realize that from a policy perspective corn production and beef production are utterly disconnected from each other.
At the end of the day beef production from feedlots provides a use for the surplus corn that ag subsidies inevitably produce.
It is critically important to realize that the economics of ag subsidies would cause this corn to be produced even if feedlots did not exist. It is an economic truism that if you subsidize something you will get more of it, and corn production is heavily subsidized.
Using corn to produce beef makes beats letting corn rot in storage or using it to fire boilers.
As a bonus feedlots provided a way to deal with seasonal / geographic changes in forage production across the US and provided a steadier supply of beef to the market.
If you want to change corn production change the ag subsidy programs.
The disconnect between the economics of corn production and the use of corn in feedlots makes trying to change corn production by chasing after beef production an utter exercise in futility.
Cheers,
TJIT
Second, beef is a very nutritious food stuff that fits well into a balanced, healthy diet.
Dad? Is that you? 🙂
My Dad raises cattle, and has a license plate that says BEEF.
Good comments all. I will weigh in on Monday, but you have covered most of the things that were on my mind.
Robert Rapier said…
Dad? Is that you? 🙂
TJIT says using Darth Vader voice
I’m your father Luke…
Sorry, could not resist the setup you left for me:-)
I have lots of friends and relatives who are in agriculture. I spent a fair amount of time working on ranches and a little bit of time in feedlots and dryland farming.
Watching farm policy in action (and cleaning up after the results of it) for a number of years tends to make one very, very, cynical about the ability of the government to develop a coherent policy that actually
1. Makes sense and
2. Actually works
I suspect energy policy will end up installing a graduate level dose of cynicism in everyone who actually sees what the energy policy ends up producing.
Cheers,
TJIT
I’m your father Luke…
Funny enough, that is the name of one of my sons. So, I use that line all the time. Luke won out over my first choice, “Sundown.” Because I always wanted to say “Put my son Sundown down.” 🙂
TJIT’s comments about feedlots and the use of injectable antibiotics for respiratory disease are spot on. Due to the intensively competitive microbial ecology of the gut, antibiotic resistance development is much more likely from the use of oral antibiotics in any species, including us humans. For cattle such use would be against the calfhood diarrheal diseases if it occurs at all. For beef cattle, this is a small proportion of herds. To see what livestock producers actually do, go to the NAHMS (National Animal Health Monitoring System) and read the results of the health and health management surveys for the particular industry. IMO ruminants (cattle) have a very important role to play in human food production by consuming plant-origin byproducts and grazing non-tillable land.
OTOH, Nigel’s comments on aquifer depletion are also spot on. Many believe that fresh water scarcity is becoming a bigger problem than energy scarcity.
FWIW, TJIT has other ethanol-related comments on the Coyote Blog, such as under the 2/6/07 post “Ethanol Lameness” and on The Volokh Conspiracy, such as under the 6/16/07 post “How Ethanol Inflates Food Prices:”.
A further aside – Ted Patzek has a 7/14/07 column titled “The Cellulosic Ethanol Delusion” in The Energy Tribune also posted on the Ethanol News. The title captures his message.
There is a wood chip to ethanol plant being built in Georgia. A lot of talk now about converting biomass to ethanol, not crops, due to recent advances. At $60 a barrel and above I suspect we can move to 15-20% ethanol in our gasoline w/o major disruptions.
Ben,
Do you have a link to the wood chip -> ethanol story? Of course, all of the lot of talk now about converting biomass to ethanol to ethanol is bunk, and shows how the federal government has managed yet again to confuse the issue (as TJIT confirms). Any fermentative ethanol has to be distilled, a huge drag on the overall conversion efficiency. And then you have ethanol, which can’y be shipped in the same pipelines as gasoline, increases the vapor pressure of E(whatever) and so causes more air pollution and evaporative losses. Bottom line: We need to steer clear of ethanol.
IMHO, our best bet is biomass -> renewable diesel as the German company CHOREN is doing. Great product, completely miscible with existing fuel supplies, and its doesn’t mix with water. Try explaining that to Washington…
Jon,
Grid losses average 7%. Large powerplants burn at up to 60% efficiency vs. 17% average for our cars. But there’s no need to burn in the first place — it only takes $1000 worth of wind turbine to fuel each PHEV. And even the worst PHEV fuel, dirty old coal, is still a HUGE improvement over oil from dictators and jihadists.
How much fuel would a non-hybrid Prius burn? None at all, because no one would buy it. Change in the real world will not come about by envisioning some parallel universe where people trade in their modern cars on 1980 Geo Metros. In the real world we have to offer something better, and it looks like PHEVs are it.
–doggydogworld
I know people are focusing heavily on PHEVs, but I would like to make the arguement for pure EVs.
Battery EVs are up to 90% efficient at converting their onboard energy to motion. ICE cars are about 30% efficient at converting their onboard energy to motion, and thats with gasoline, not lower energy content biofuels. So, while there are inefficienies in getting energy stored in an EV, once there, it is highly efficient. (Look at a PV charged EV. PV converts 12% of sunlight to electricity with no emissions. 99% of that electricity is stored in the battery. 90% of that electricity is converted to motion. Has anyone calculated all of the losses in extracting, transporting, refining and distributing a gallon of gasoline to the tank of a car?)
So, based on that, why should we hang on to the seriously inefficient ICE solution?
Even powering EV’s with coal, a fleet of coal powered EVs will produce less CO2 than the same fleet of vehicles powered individually with gas.
It has been estimated that no additional electrical supply would be needed to replace a majority of the ICE cars with EVs charging overnight. So, since 45% of our CO2 emissions are from transportation, we can significantly reduce that by replacing our gas cars with a non-polluting car.
If we can develop clean technologies to mass produce zero emitting vehicles, it becomes an easier task to then clean up the electrical supply by reducing coal use, increasing geothermal, solar thermal, wind and biomass generated electricity. I’m hopeful for nuclear fusion, but am not holding my breath.
There are several zero emission vehicle solutions, all with pros and cons. Battery EVs (Lithium Ion, Lithium Polymer), Compressed Air cars, fuel cells. These are all in various stages of development. My personal favorite is the Lithium Polymer battery EV. Li-Poly is 100% recyclable, and with the proper charging controls (built onboard the EV), is safe to use. These batteries currently have about a 70,000 mile life span and a 450 lb battery pack can take a small car 180 miles, and be charged in a few hours at 220v or in as little as 10 minutes at a special charging facility.
I think multiple technologies will develop and evolve to make our transition to a post-fossil economy pssible. But I really think biofuels for transportation is not the answer. It may be today’s first step, but I think we need to jump over that step as quickly as possible.